Good Old Games wages war on DRM

Far from protecting the games industry, DRM is actually damaging it according to the MD of download site Good Old Games Guillaume Rambourg.

GoG.com offers a number of titles, all of which are completely free of any digital rights management restrictions.

“To beat piracy, our offer to gamers had to be both hassle-free and rewarding,” he told MCV. “If you make the overall experience more troublesome than downloading and playing an illegal copy, then all you can achieve is encouraging users to give piracy a try.

“This is why we decided to release all titles without any DRM, as well as making all of them fully compatible with modern operating systems – which is an area where piracy fails to perform. Again, adding technical constraints on such products would only encourage piracy and that’s why we decided to do exactly the opposite.

“Let’s be honest: it is very easy for any gamer to pirate a PC game these days, so the last thing we want to do is to impact loyal gamers. These people should be rewarded for buying PC products in 2011 and beyond, and spread the good message out there.

“At the end of the day, PC gamers are paying everybody’s wages in the industry and this is why we need to have a win-win situation here. Believe in your users and in exchange they will join forces with you to fight against piracy… as long as your offer is fair and rewarding to them, of course.”

MCV is the leading trade news and community site for all professionals working within the UK and international video games market. It reaches everyone from store manager to CEO, covering the entire industry. MCV is published by NewBay Media, which specialises in entertainment, leisure and technology markets.